


Nine lies Cvijeta told and the one time she told the truth

by MinervaNorth



Series: Leverage International: Europe West [4]
Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-02-01 05:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21397897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MinervaNorth/pseuds/MinervaNorth
Summary: View the image collage here: http://tiny.cc/9lies.
Relationships: Eliot Spencer/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Leverage International: Europe West [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542628
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Nine lies Cvijeta told and the one time she told the truth

**Author's Note:**

> View the image collage here: http://tiny.cc/9lies.

_"I was born in Zagreb, but in the early 90s, there was the Homeland W—the Croatian War for Independence. I think it was summer, 1995? I had moved to Bosnia—Bihać—prior to the war, then got stuck there during the Siege. I was helping out at the hospital.”_

  
I left Zagreb. I couldn’t bear to be there anymore. Not after the rocket attacks. I went towards Bihać—I was told it was impossible to get beyond the siege lines, but no one gives a second look to a seventeen-year-old homeless, orphaned refugee. I pick a few pockets. I tell a few lies. I get into Bihać, and find myself a nice ruined storefront to live in, once I clean out the shards of glass and brace the second floor with some pieces of old wood.

After a while, I finally consider some of the things my dad taught me. A former munitions expert, it was some sort of sick irony he would die as a civilian during a rocket attack. But I know I’ll get my revenge, one way or another.

* * *

_"I’d been shot a few times. Found my way to Bihać,” Eliot says…“Anyway, instead of takin’ me to the hospital, she took me in.”_  
_I chuckle. “I couldn’t say no.”__  
_  
I aim my gun at him, but he keeps shuffling down the street, holding a hand to his shoulder. He’s not in fatigues. He doesn’t look like one of ours or one of theirs. His eyes dart, back and forth, looking from house to house. He’s nervous. He’s too much in the open.  
“_Tko si_?” I call out, and he seems to look for where the voice is coming from.  
The moonlight hits his face, and I barely lower my gun. He’s not much older than I am, and he’s got a pistol. He shakily aims it at me. He says something in English. Something about needing help. I understand about three quarters of it, but I stare at him blankly.  
“_Govoriš li… uh, po-russki_?” He finally says.  
“_Da_,” I switch, holding up my gun again. “What do you want?”  
“Is there anyone with you?”  
“…_nyet_,” I say quickly. “I’ll shoot you.”  
“Someone beat you to it.”  
I’m about to make another snide comment, but he drops to his knees, the pistol sliding to the ground. He doesn’t look good. He doesn’t look good at all.  
“The hospital’s down the street,” I say, pointing with my gun. I’m not going to deal with this. I don’t have enough food; I don’t have enough supplies. I’ve only been here for a little over a month. I’ve barely been able to salvage enough for me. I cannot deal with this right now. I turn to leave, but he starts speaking.  
“I—I was trying to get through the siege lines, try to punch a hole in their defenses. I’ve been sent to help.”  
“You and what army?” I say. But he really doesn’t look good, and his eyes—a bright blue that make me lower the gun again. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t do this. I can’t look after another person.  
He chuckles. There’s blood on his lips. “Just me.”  
I look down the street, both ways, but see nothing. I sling my gun over my shoulder and run into the street, cursing the whole way. This boy is going to be the death of me, I swear.  
When I get in front of him, I wield my gun like a bat. He chuckles, tiredly, bloody, but he looks so young. He’s so young.  
“You aren’t going to kill me?” I say, kneeling in front of him. It’s a little too late for that anyway. He shakes his head, cringing. He wavers. He’s got a lot of blood on him. A lot. Pulling his arm across my shoulders, he takes a long look at me. With part of my sleeve, I wipe some of the blood from his mouth, but we hear gunfire. I jump. He doesn’t.  
I grab his pistol and slip it into my waistband, and when I do, I pull him to his feet. He’s taller than me, falls into me, but I easily hold him up. As I drag him off to my hovel, he clears his throat.  
“What’s your name?” He asks in English, his voice husky.  
“Cvijeta.”  
“Eliot.”

* * *

_"I really had no idea what I was doing,” I say. “He had been hit a few times. I had never dealt with a bullet wound before. Neither had he. But I patched him up and I hid him there.”__  
_  
I pull him up onto my makeshift cot to sit and try to get the extent of his wounds. None of them look good. I don’t know how he’s made it this far. He looks like he’s about to fall over. He holds a hand to his bullet wound on his shoulder. Blood seeps through his fingers.  
“You came from the border?!”  
“Only few kilometers,” he says. I push down his hands, covered in blood, and start taking off his jacket.  
“Hope the other guy didn’t get away clean.”  
“The first dozen didn’t.”  
I’m not sure if he’s kidding or not, but I light the candle on my table. When I get back to him, I gently pull his jacket off. It’s practically ruined, but I hang it on the chair anyway. With another careful hand, I pull off his white t-shirt underneath. Well, it was white. It’s mostly red now.  
“You’re American,” I say. He just barely smirks. “You shouldn’t be here.”  
“That’s obvious from the gunshot wounds.” He draws a hard breath when I start applying pressure on his shoulder with his ruined shirt.  
“Hold that,” I order, going back to my personal supply of emergency materials. I’ve stolen so much at this point that I actually think he may be okay.  
“You’re a thief,” he accuses, his breath coming in short spurts.  
“I prefer ‘retrieval specialist’,” I say, grabbing my bandages. I don’t have a lot of vodka left, but I take a quick drink, then kneel in front of him. He tiredly smiles.  
“’Retrieval specialist’, huh?” He says, cringing when I pour the alcohol on the open wound. At least it’s through and through. I find gauze and start taping it off, but the chain around his neck gets in the way. I look at the pair of dog tags—not silver. Black. My father told me that was to mark American Special Ops soldiers. They’re not to be trusted.  
He watches me when I hold it up enough to read it the embossed metal.

  
SPENCER ELIOT  
440 72 5683  
O NEG  
PROTESTANT

  
“Eliot Spencer?”  
“Yours truly.”  
“Where… where else are you hit?” I ask, spotting a bullet graze on his left arm. I thread my needle, pour some vodka on it, and start sewing, trying to make my hands stop shaking. His hands shake too and I see where he’s been hit—grazed, but still deep—on his side. I sew up both, bandage them, then start cleaning off as much of the blood as possible from his bare chest. When I get to his hands, he holds them out in front of him, and I see now that some of his fingers are broken. He shifts to sitting on the bed, turning towards me, so I kneel in front of him, taking his hand in mine.  
“You look like you hit hard,” I say conversationally, wedging my own hand under his fingers. He doesn’t say a word as I bend his fingers straight again. He gasps, exhales loudly, then falls silent.  
“I’ve got to do the other one,” I say, and I gently take his left hand. Surprisingly, he watches me do it. I wrap up the broken ones after I clean them and splint them together. He’s quiet, and I’m methodical.  
“Eliot,” I begin, seeing his pale face in the candlelight and the sweat collecting on his brow, “Is this all your blood?”  
He just harrumphs. I ease him down onto the bed, then squeeze some of his blood off his old t-shirt onto the table. With a slice on the back of my hand, I drop my own blood on top and start rummaging through my supplies—there’s got to be something here to use.  
“You’ve dealt with gunshot wounds before?” He asks quietly.  
Although I don’t want to, I push up my sleeve and show him the deep slice on my left arm. It never healed quite right, even after I sewed it up.  
He doesn’t say a word. Not until I turn back to him.  
“That’s… that’s an old battlefield trick,” he mutters when I check to see if the blood is still wet. It is.  
“Good thing we’re a match,” I say, prepping myself to give him some of my blood.  
“Hey… Cvi… Cvij… you got a nickname?” He’s finally fading, and his speech slurs.  
“No.”  
“How about Cee.”  
I try to hide my smile, but he’s still got me worried. I stand up, and touch his shoulder, just barely, and he cringes. He wavers.  
“Your shoulder.”  
“Probably dislocated.”  
I sigh, slipping behind him. “This wouldn’t feel very good even if you didn’t have a bullet wound,” I say, placing my hands on either side of his shoulder. I don’t count. I just snap it back into place. He barely makes a sound, but he starts to lull back into me. I’m not going to lose him now, so I jam the needle in my arm once I’ve got the tourniquet in.  
“Eliot. Listen to me. Can you hear me?”  
He barely nods, still leaning back into me.  
“You walked a half dozen kilometers with three gunshot wounds and a dislocated shoulder. You can handle this.”  
He grabs for my hand, nearly slips, but catches. I grasp tightly to him and he smiles. He lays onto me for as long as I can handle giving him my blood, and then once I’m done, we both fall asleep.

* * *

_“He started to teach me English; he taught me some of his skills. We held out, though, against the Serbs. We kept it together.”__  
_  
After about two weeks, he finally starts to get better, and starts asking me about what I do: I pickpocket. I steal. I steal back things for the people who’ve gotten their things stolen by the Bosniaks. It’s a vicious circle but I’m here.  
“What about your parents?” He asks me in English one day in the middle of July.  
“Dead,” I say, zipping my butterfly knife around my hand.  
“What happened?”  
“Bombings in Zagreb a few weeks ago,” I say. “I left the city.”  
“You could speak English this entire time.”  
“Yes, but why make it easy for the American?”  
He chuckles, readjusts the sling I’ve made him. “Can you shoot?”  
“Wanna find out?” I instinctively say, nudging my head towards my gun.  
With both share a short laugh.  
“Well, I was gonna offer to teach you some things, but it looks like you’ve got it all sorted out,” he says, leaning back against the wall.  
“I think I’ve got it all sorted out,” I say, flipping my knife and slipping it away. “You have a girl back home, don’t you?”  
At first, he looks taken aback, but then he nods. “Amy.”  
“Is she pretty?”  
He doesn’t say a word, he just smiles.  
“I hope you get back to her.”  
The familiar sound of incoming bombing makes me jump from my chair. Immediately, I douse the light on my candle, throwing us into darkness.  
“We’re on the outskirts. We might be okay. Tanks… tanks and mortars…” All of these things can explode. They can kill us this way. Just like the rockets in Zagreb. Just like them. Got to get out. Got to run. Got to—  
The explosion rocks the building, sending shards of wood and dust down on our heads. I see the rockets. I see the—the fire—I shrink to the floor.  
“Cee. Cee—Cvijeta!” Eliot stage whispers, grabbing on to me. He shakes me once. “Listen to me,” he switches back to Russian. “We’ve gotta stay calm.”  
He gestures to me to help him pick up my bed frame. We do, and he props it up on a fallen beam. “Get under here. Quick,” he directs, and I do what I’m told. He drags a blanket down, first to me, then another to create a makeshift tent. We’re hidden inside, and mostly protected by the bed frame. It’s not going to save our lives from an explosion, but if there are troops…  
“Listen. You’re hyperventilating. You need to breathe. It’s gonna be okay,” he mutters, offering me his hand. I take it quickly. I take it and he pulls me closer to him, closer to the more protected part of our hidden shelter, until I curl up beside him under his arm. I feel my entire body shake. I can’t make it stop. Eliot pulls me closer, and brushes my hair back from my face as he hums.  
“Do you—d’you sing?” I ask in English.  
“Um, yeah. Sometimes.”  
“Can—can you?”  
He keeps humming over the sound of gun fire, of mortars, until, during a lull in the carnage, I hear his light voice, with a country twang and just a hint of quaver from what I expect is fear—  
“Well, I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord, but you don’t really care for music, do you? Well, it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth; the minor fall and the major lift. The baffled king composing hallelujah.”  
He sings the word over the sound of gunpowder and gunfire. I cry until the bombing stops, and then I refuse to leave. I refuse to leave the shelter until the next sunrise.

* * *

_"He got shipped home,” I say. “In terms of the profession, well… I liked what I was doing, so I kept at it.”__  
_  
When August came, so did our independence. The Siege ended, and we could get back to our lives, which suddenly—and regrettably—included Eliot leaving. When he first made contact, when he had been considered missing in action, they said it would take all of two days to mobilize a helicopter to get him out of there.  
He was healed by that point. The Special Forces soldier that had slipped into my ruined storefront a month before was broken no more, and he would be sent home.  
Eliot knew. He was smart and intuitive, and although I was only seventeen it didn’t take a genius to realize why I didn’t want him to leave.  
The night before the ‘rescue’ he finally addressed it.  
“You know I’ve gotta go.” When I don’t say anything, in English or Croatian or Russian, he continues. “I… I really don’t wanna leave either.”  
This surprises me, and I straighten, holding my matches in shaking fingers as I try to light the candle.  
“I… I didn’t know you… you…” I try, making a few weak attempts to light the match. I finally get it to light, and the one candle I still manage to have flickers light on the broken walls. He turns me towards him, his hands on my hips, then on my cheeks, then his lips on my lips. I don’t stop him. I don’t push him away. I move into it until he breaks the kiss.  
“Promise me something, Cee.”  
“Anything.”  
“Get out of this life while you still can. Promise me. Please.”  
“I—I promise,” I say quickly, definitively. I hated what I did, but it’s the only thing I know how to do. He kisses me again, confirming my promise, but somewhere, deep inside my heart, I knew I wasn’t telling the truth. Not after what happened, what we saw here. I’m never seeing this happen again.  
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” I add, hoping if I break my promise, at least he’ll have his.  
“I promise.”  
When I wake up the next morning, I expect him to be sleeping on his pile of blankets on the floor, but he’s already gone.  
I don’t expect to see him ever again. I never forgive him for leaving.

* * *

_"The first time we found each other was in Marrakech. Three years later. He had no idea I was retrieving. We had a nice long talk about it, and then didn’t think we’d see each other again.”__  
_  
I run through the hail of gunfire, trying not to laugh as I do. It’s really sad at times how awful their aim is.  
I bump and weave through the alleyways of Marrakech. Everything’s so tightly built here, I know how easily I can disappear.  
Someone’s following me though. Someone’s on my tail, and I can’t seem to shake him.  
A fake, a turn, and I don’t hear his footsteps anymore.  
Instead, he drops down from the rafters in front of me—  
I guard my benefactor’s loot and aim my gun at him, but it takes me a moment. He’s quicker than I am.  
“Cee?”  
The hair’s a little longer, and we’re both three years older now, but it’s him. For the first time, it’s him. It’s his eyes.  
“Eliot?”  
“What the hell are you doing?” He asks in Russian.  
“Firstly, I go by Charlie now. Secondly, my job,” I respond in English.  
His furrowed eyebrows fade to recognition. “You’re retrieving.”  
“What else would I be doing with this?” I say, holding the loot and shaking the bag. He drops his fighting stance and shakes his head at me.  
“You promised. You promised me.”  
“Yeah. I promised you. But I also haven’t heard from you in three years, so I guess we’re even.”  
I jump and grab onto the section of window, then pull myself up onto the roof of the building. From here, I can jump from roof to roof.  
Looking down at him, I shake my head. “Don’t come after me. Don’t—I don’t want to see you again.”  
“Cee!” He yells, but he’s a little slower climbing up to the roof. “Cvijeta!”  
I don’t look back. I don’t give him the benefit of the backwards look. Besides, I don’t want him to see the tears streaming down my face.

* * *

_“I think the next time was two years later. 2000. In Lebanon,” I say. “We had a slight disagreement over some merchandise. I won. But then he kicked my ass in El Salvador later than year, so I guess it was fair.”_

“Looks like you got over Lebanon,” I say to Eliot as he circles me. He knows he’s got me in a corner: literally and figuratively. I brace myself against the wall. It’s a good wall. It should be, for being a Mayan ruin. Too bad I’m leaving blood streaks on it.  
“Still pissed,” he says. “I almost died in that explosion.” He cases me, his eyes raking my body. Not for any good reason, mind; he’s looking for any slight twitch, any possible movement, any telltale sign I’m going to move.  
I’m not. I’m pretty sure he’s broken at least four of my ribs, my wrist, and did a number on my shoulder.  
“I would be too,” I begin. “You failed the mission, and you got shot in the process. And you nearly died in the wreckage of that warehouse.”  
“By you!” He says through his teeth.  
I shake my head, feeling myself slide a little further down the wall. “You of all people should understand why I’m doing this.”  
“I made you promise me, and you didn’t listen. You’re a gun for hire!”  
“I made you promise me, and you didn’t listen!” I yell, immediately regretting the breath I’ve wasted. “You promised me to be careful, and you weren’t!”  
“We were kids, Cee!”  
“I saved your life! We both saw the same thing over there. What do you expect me to do?”  
“So what are we going to do, kill each other? Keep fightin’ each other ‘til one of us dies?”  
I slide down the wall until I sit on the hard ground. “This was never a fair fight and you know it. One of us always had the upper hand.” I draw a breath through my teeth. “You never went home to Amy, did you?”  
He shakes his head. “Don’t bring her into this.”  
“I can see it in your eyes. She left you for someone else, didn’t she?”  
I’ve struck too hard of a chord. He reaches down and pulls the package from my hands. I don’t even fight.  
“Just remember who started this fight,” he says. And like I did in Lebanon to him, he walks away without a look behind to me.  
I nearly die that night.

* * *

_"2002, we were in the States. Louisiana, right? Carrolton, in New Orleans. The first time we actually worked together. Pretty uneventful job. We went our separate ways for a while after.”_

I work the businessman’s gala quietly. I never pretended to be a grifter. Never my scene, but when it comes to being able to find a liar in a room, I’ve got radar. It won’t be long until I get my client’s wedding ring back from her cheating husband.  
I peer through audience, trying to search for the bastard to make sure he’s distracted. He’s talking to a man, wearing wire framed… glasses…  
Eliot. Eliot’s here. Of course he is. I’m just too tired for this anymore. If he’s working for the cheating asshole, I’m never going to forgive him.  
Especially not after El Salvador.  
I snatch a glass of champagne from the nearest server and down it in one go as I step onto the balcony.  
“Charlie?”  
I steel myself, but don’t turn around. “Eliot.”  
Instead, he leans against the balcony, and I finally force myself to look. He looks different from the last time I saw him. I heard he had become a private contractor, and it looks like it: his hair isn’t cropped military short. It’s past his ears now.  
“You look good,” is the first thing I can say.  
“I’m—it’s good to see you,” he says. “You—you’re—“  
“I’m alive? Is that what you were going to say?”  
“No. Charlie, c’mon.”  
“What are you doing here?” I say, dropping my voice low.  
“His former mistress wants her necklace back.”  
“Oh? How much is it worth?”  
“$3 million.”  
“I’m after the engagement ring of the wife,” I offer. He didn’t ask, and I don’t know why I’m telling. “$2.5 mil.”  
“Damn. What’s your cut?”  
“10 percent. Extra $25,000 if I can snag a tennis bracelet too.”  
Eliot looks over his shoulder at the party host again. “10 percent for me too,” he mutters.  
“You’re thinking.”  
“Yeah, I’m thinkin’. I can’t seem to break this guy. His hand’s always in his pocket, and I can’t get to his keys.”  
He’s baiting me. He’s baiting me and he knows it. “You know I’m a good pickpocket.”  
“I do,” he says, not looking away from the host. We both watch him for a while. The only time his hand leaves his pocket is when he goes to grab one of the serving girl’s asses.  
“I really wanna screw this guy,” I say. “Not… not like that. I mean in the financial sense.”  
“I’ve got a plan. You distract him, snag the key, we pull a double reverse, then I get the goods.”  
“What’s stopping you from taking them with you?”  
He glares at me for a moment. “Don’t you trust me?”  
“Not anymore.”  
“Me neither,” he mutters. “I’ll split the difference with you.”  
“You’ll give me $37,500 to pick that guy’s pocket just so you don’t have to?”  
“Somethin’ tells me you’ve got an advantage.”  
I stare at him for a moment. We’re both older now. We’re both a little more careful. We’re making names for ourselves in the game. But something tells me he really does want my help.  
Without a second thought, I roll up the hem of my tight cocktail dress a few inches.  
“I’ll pull my earlobe when I’ve got it,” I say, not waiting to hear confirmation from Eliot.  
Half an hour later, I’m headed out of the party, knowing my part of con was complete. Something in me tells me not to trust Eliot, but part of me says trust him implicitly.  
It’s when someone drops out of the second floor window of the fancy New Orleans home that I remember the nineteen-year-old Black Ops soldier.  
We scale the wall out of the Audubon Estates, then I lead him down Freret Street. In the dark, where the light had gone out, I stop and accost him.  
“Let’s see it,” I say, holding out my hand.  
He doesn’t say anything, but I read it in his face—that I don’t trust him. Regardless, he reaches into his pocket and hands me the ring box. The 7 total carats literally blind me, but I check it and the tennis bracelet before snapping it shut and placing it in my clutch.  
“Pleasure doing business with you,” I say. “I’ll find you for my cut of your payment.” I start down the street, getting past Tulane, but he follows me. We walk for a while, his hands in his pockets, silent. I don’t tell him to leave.  
“Where are you staying?”  
“Inn on St. Peter,” I say automatically. I couldn’t lie to Eliot anyway, not even if I wanted to.  
“At least let me make sure you get back.”  
“Ever the gentleman. Where are you staying?”  
“Some place in Bywater,” he mutters, flagging down a taxi. When he gets me one, I slip across to the other side.  
“Well, you can at least share the ride with me,” I say. He raises his eyebrow, gets in, and we’re off.  
The first couple minutes are quiet, until he finally speaks.  
“Your accent’s gone.”  
“You still sound like a Southern gentleman,” I let slip. I hear him chuckle. I had to get rid of it. I had to work hard over the past seven years, but by God, I didn’t want to have it haunting me any longer.  
“Look…” I say, finally turning to him. He adjusts his glasses, waiting for me to figure out exactly how I want to say it. “I never should have let Lebanon get that far out of hand. It was uncalled for. We… we were friends once, and I shouldn’t have let… our jobs get in between that.”  
He exhales quietly, giving me a small, genuine smile.  
“I was gonna apologize for El Salvador, but you beat me to it.”  
“You can still apologize,” I say, opening the door and slipping out of the car. I look around the outside of the historic hotel, nearly cursing myself, but I say it anyway. “C’mon. Let’s… grab a drink or something. Catch up.”  
He quickly pays the taxi driver, and we’re alone on the corner.  
“It’s been a long time since we haven’t been on a job,” I say. “We’re usually fighting each other.”  
“Can we stop doin’ that?” He asks. I can’t help but laugh.  
“No promises,” I say, grinning. His laugh, though, fades a little. I take a step closer to him, and he doesn’t move away. “Seven years. Bihać was seven years ago.”  
“You promised you wouldn’t get into this.”  
“You promised to be careful.”  
We’ve had a history with promises, and all we’ve done to each other is break promises.  
I lean up to him, touch my fingers to his jaw. “Good night, Eliot,” I whisper, brushing my lips against his cheek. I start to walk away, I fight the urge to look back as I fight the tears welling in my eyes, but he grabs my hand and spins me back into him, drawing me back to his lips and his hands until I gasp for air.  
“Seven years is long enough,” he says, his eyes darting from my eyes to my lips.  
“You wanna go upstairs for that drink?” I ask, but it’s not a question. It’s the response.  
We never end up getting those drinks.

* * *

_"I kicked his ass again in Brasov, but he forgave me for it. Worked our way through Belgrade together in 2005. We got involved in a little incident there, then teamed up for a little while. We ran to Satu Mare to lie low.” _

“I told you, I’m sorry for Brasov. You know how bad that was. That was a whole different situation.”  
“Look, I didn’t blow your cover,” he snarls. I know he’s still pissed. He’ll be pissed for a while. Honestly, he’s changed since he started working for Damien Moreau. He’s good at what he does, but still—I don’t like it. Every time I look at him, I see that nineteen-year-old, and every year, part of that man dies.  
It really happened since the last time I saw him. I don’t know what changed since 2002, but he’s darker. Scarier.  
Well, I think I do know. I’m pretty sure I know what changed. The hair, maybe. The soul, mostly. His eyes are still blue but they’re vacant, even now, behind those wire framed glasses.  
I hold a hand to my side. It’s still throbbing. I’ve only been hit once, and he’s been hit twice, but we’re still moving.  
“We’re nearly there,” I say, seeing the city in the distance. We make it there, we can lie low, and disappear for a while. I grift our way in, and we scramble up to the hotel room, and I can’t stop shaking. It’s freezing.  
“I’m sorry for blowing it in Belgrade. Literally.”  
“Stop apologizing.”  
“What the hell do you want me to do? I’m gonna take ownership of the fuck up.”  
“Stop. Apologizing.”  
“Moreau… he’s gonna find out. Sooner or later.”  
He steps forward, but his leg gives out, and he grasps for the wall. I rush to him, but he waves me away. “Let’s hope it’s later.”  
“We can run for the border. We can get out of here, go to… go to Russia, or something.”  
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” He snarls through his teeth. “We’re both shot. You… you blew up another building. What’s with you blowing up buildings? Belgrade…”  
“Was a shit show,” I say hollowly. It was. More people died that should have, but I can’t… I can’t dwell on it. It’s like Eliot said: when you kill someone, two people die. That person and the person you were before.  
I see that in his eyes now more than ever.  
He immediately starts up the shower, and I see the steam rolling from the hot water.  
“Okay. We get patched up. We get some sleep. We keep moving. And you better not use all that hot water,” I snap, shaking until I take off my coat, then my sweater.  
He stands up, and instead of watching me struggle to take off my shirt, he slips it over my head. For a moment, the old Eliot’s back.  
“You could always join me,” he says. “It would probably help, you know, cleaning off all the blood.”  
“You just want to get me naked,” I snap.  
“Again,” he corrects. “Again this week.”  
“We’ve gotta stop this,” I say, but he’s already unbuttoning my pants. I lean up to him, and he runs his lips against mine before kissing me again. I don’t want it to stop, and I know he knows it.  
Nothing happens in Satu Mare. Nothing besides us, making out in the shower as we clean off the blood, then sleeping in each other’s arms as neither of us feel good enough to take a watch.  
It doesn’t matter.  
If the nightmares don’t get us, we’d be awake at the drop of a pin anyway.  
Satu Mare, 2005, is the last time he and I actually aren’t at each other’s throats.

* * *

_"The last time I saw him was Kiev. That was 10 years ago. I… I made some mistakes in Kiev. I said some things I probably shouldn’t have said. After that, he went off with your team. I worked alone. And now… now we’re here.”_

The building burns behind us, and I start running away from the man they call the Butcher. Unfortunately, Eliot’s still back there. He shouldn’t be here. I didn’t know he would be here. This is the last thing that should be happening.  
I turn around, I go to look, and he’s wielding a burning piece of wood. It smashes into the head of the Butcher of Kiev, knocking him to the ground.  
I don’t know if he’s alive or not. The Butcher, not Eliot. I hear Eliot cursing at me as we run.  
“What the hell was that? How did you blow up that building so easily?”  
“There was no way I was going to kick his ass! Did you see how big he was? I had to do something!”  
“Yeah! Yeah, I did see how big he was!”  
“El, you’ve gotta get out of here. Get out of here now.”  
“What? Charlie, what the hell are you talking about?” He’s bleeding, he’s out of breath. I can’t do this to him right now.  
I cringe, I try not to cry, and his face goes from royally pissed off to extremely concerned. “You have to leave. You have to leave before—“  
“What did you do?”  
I see the red dot appear on his chest before he does, and my heart drops.  
“Listen to me. I know you stopped working for Moreau…”  
He sets his jaw. “But you haven’t.”  
“I can’t help it. He owns me for another two years.”  
“What the hell did you do?”  
I look over his shoulder, pulling out my own gun, and he clenches his fists. The men begin to descend on us. They’re not my men, but they’re working with me. Or at least, they claim to be.  
“There was an incident. In a prison in Nigeria. Moreau… he bailed me out. I—I didn’t have a choice. You’ve got to understand that.”  
“You baited me,” Eliot snarls. He counts, he tries to count the men around me, but it’s no use. I don’t know how he would even consider fighting them all. “You’re doin’ his wetwork.”  
“Don’t do it, El. Don’t. Please. Don’t blame me for this. I didn’t know this was going to happen, that you were going to be here. You’re not going to get out of this one alive if you try, but if you listen—if you tru—“  
“I’m not going to trust you,” he says, cutting me off. “I’m not trusting you ever again. See, I’ve noticed something. When I trust you, it goes to shit. So you better start explaining, or I’m gonna start breakin’ skulls. Yours first.”  
I breathe through my teeth. “You know that assassin… that assassin that’s been makin’ the circuit?”  
His face falls. “They’ve been calling him C4. He blows up wherever he’s done the hit. High profile and real messy.”  
“Yeah… they’ve been calling_ her_ C4.”  
I step back, away from the red dots collecting on his chest.  
“Spencer!” Moreau calls out from his hiding spot. “Looks like your time is up, old friend.”  
It all clicks into place for Eliot. He glares at Moreau, then me, then cases as many men as he can see surrounding us in the dark. He can’t win. Not this time.  
“Didn’t expect to see you around here,” Eliot says.  
“We didn’t either,” Moreau begins. “You are an unexpected bonus. Novak—“ he turns to me. “You kill him, and our deal is complete.”  
My heart falls. I keep my face stoic. When I turn to Eliot, all remnants of the man I knew in Bosnia are gone. He’s nothing like the person I knew. And I’m sure I’m the same to him.  
“I want to do this one on my own,” I say, hiding the quaver in my voice.  
Moreau, though, barely shrugs. “Fine. If I find out he is alive after this, though, you’re dead. Just know that.”  
“Understood,” I say, and Moreau begins to call off his dogs. One by one, they leave the factory grounds, letting us circle each other in perpetual agony.  
“You’re a traitor,” Eliot growls at me.  
“Will you please just—“  
“Trust you? That’s the last thing I’m gonna do.”  
“Listen,” I say, circling around him one last time. “There’s a sniper on the roof behind me. If he doesn’t see you go down, I’m going to be dead and so are you.”  
“Are you tellin’ me you’re gonna kill me to save your own skin?”  
I squeeze my eyes shut. I try to push away the tears. “Kind of. No, not really. Here’s what’s going to happen,” I finally say, collecting my thoughts. “I’m going to shoot you. You’re going to stumble backwards. I’m going to detonate the C4 in that barrel to your two o’clock, and you’re going to fall back into the Dnieper River. Then… then you’re going to disappear. We’re never going to see each other again. You’re going to stay out of Moreau’s crosshairs. And that’s that. Okay? Okay.”  
I extend my gun in front of him, and he steps backwards instinctively.  
“I should have never asked you for help,” He says.  
“We can’t change eleven years ago.”  
“Doesn’t stop me from hopin’.”  
“What, and change everything we’ve been through up until now?” I ask, letting the tears roll down my face. The red dot flickers into view on his chest, and I close my eyes, trying to collect myself. “I… I don’t want to say goodbye. But Moreau’s given me two choices. At least help me make a third.”  
He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t speak much anymore. Not to me. I guess I haven’t given him a reason to.  
“Eliot, you’ve got to understand. I never wanted to say goodbye to you. Never. Not even after Lebanon, not after El Salvador. Especially not after New Orleans.”  
His expression doesn’t change.  
“I fell in love with you in Bosnia. And Eliot, that never changed. That’s one thing I knew that never changed.”  
His face changes. The anger doesn’t totally leave, but it fades a little.  
“I still love you,” I whisper. I don’t know if he hears me.  
The red dot goes away. In the split second between the sound and the pain, I realize the target’s been changed. We’ve talked too long. Moreau’s given the order to kill us both. I let the bullet cut through my shoulder. I see the bloom of red as it buries itself in his right shoulder, but the force moves much slower. He dives into the water as I dive out of the way of the bomb. In the smoke and fire and ash, I start running. I run in the opposite direction that Eliot would have swam. I run until the pain makes it so I can’t run anymore, then I run until I get to Minsk, and I don’t stop. I run as far from Damien Moreau as possible.  
I run as far away from Eliot Spencer as possible.


End file.
